Bing Social beta adds Facebook to Twitter

Bing has launched a new social section that not only indexes Twitter, but …

When Bing started serving up Twitter real-time search results eight months ago, Microsoft also announced a global partnership with Facebook, but refused to give a launch date. That launch is upon us with the announcement of Bing.com/Social, a new section that combines search results from the two social networks. Bing Social leverages partnerships with both Facebook and Twitter to deliver real-time results of public updates from aggregated data and Fan Pages. It also uses public profile updates to detect trending topics and surface top links being shared. To head off privacy concerns, Microsoft is emphasizing that "none of the non-Fan Page content can be traced back to the individual user as it only surfaces in the aggregate form."

Bing Social has various filters and multiple tabs that users can browse after inputting their query; there is a firehose of tweets as well as popular links that people are sharing, sortable by relevance or by time stamp. Trending topics are displayed in the left-hand column; each one shows a summary of the topic plus data Bing pulls down from Facebook and Twitter.

The new service was set to go live this morning as a beta but was not yet live at the time of writing. ("The page you want isn't available. We're working to restore service as soon as possible.") The company would not reveal when it hopes to launch the final version of the service.

Separately, Microsoft also announced an updated version of the Bing Webmaster Tools, available later this summer. The software giant said the tools have been reengineered from the ground up to offer more data through an improved user interface. The tools assess performance in several key areas, including crawl, index, and traffic. Each area will offer granular data going back as far as six months with on-the-fly adjustable charting, including new rich visual charts built with Silverlight. The new tools will remain Web-based and basic functionality will be available through most Web browsers.